A Huge Loss

Chapter 42: A Huge Loss

The evening of July 5th was unusually cool.

Cheng Yun finally didn't have to work the night shift, which meant he had more time in the evening. He used to habitually go out to enjoy the night scenery and night markets, or go for a workout and run.

"Should we train our stamina first or our punches?" Cheng Yun asked Heroine Yin.

"Whatever," Heroine Yin replied.

"Then let's go out and train our stamina first! Cheng Yan has been wanting to run with me, so it's time she saw my stamina. That way, she won't call me a weakling all day," Cheng Yun said. "Besides, if we practice punches now, it might attract her attention. If we do it later, she should be asleep by then. What do you think, Heroine?"

"Oh, oh," Heroine Yin nodded dazedly.

"Then I'll go up and call her, and change into my running shoes and clothes," Cheng Yun said. He turned his head and glanced at the t-shirt Heroine Yin was wearing. "Aren't you going to change?"

"Huh? I don't need to change, do I?"

"I mean your... innerwear," Cheng Yun said, pointing a finger at Heroine Yin's not-small chest. "I remember I bought you a sports bra. You should wear that. Otherwise, with your chest... a regular bra probably can't handle it. It'll bounce a lot when you run."

"Wha! What are you talking about!? How could you...!" Heroine Yin's face flushed slightly. Whether it was annoyance or anger, she glared at him and then scurried upstairs.

Not long after, the three of them stood at the entrance of the Yida track and field stadium.

It was still far from dark at six o'clock in midsummer, around the time people had just finished dinner. University students were overflowing with energy, disregarding the health benefits of goji berries and beer. Some guys were sweating profusely on the green field after dinner, while some girls skipped dinner to come for a run and lose weight. Coupled with faculty members walking their grandchildren or pets, and couples holding hands and showing off their affection while strolling, the vast track and field stadium was crowded and almost packed with people, a stark contrast to when Cheng Yun and Heroine Yin had come last time!

Cheng Yun held a bottle of high-calorie milk tea in one hand and a bottle of mineral water in the other, neither of them opened.

Cheng Yan took a neat sip of her mineral water and strode into the stadium entrance first.

Heroine Yin followed closely behind, cutely hugging a can of Sprite and sipping it in small sips, her eyes wide as she looked around the sports field.

"There are so many people!" she exclaimed.

"Yeah," Cheng Yun nodded. "I told you we should have gone to the wetland park."

"The rubber track is less damaging to the knees," Cheng Yan said, giving him a cold glance. "You don't know the value of your body when you're young, and you'll regret it when you're paralyzed in old age."

"Hey, isn't that saying supposed to be pronounced differently?"

"Stop babbling and start your warm-up!" Cheng Yan began to warm up silently, her gaze unwavering, ignoring the eyes of the men and women in the stadium that were falling on her.

She was wearing loose athletic shorts and running shoes. A red string, which Cheng Yun had bought as a freebie from Taobao years ago, was tied around her slender ankles. Her legs were dazzlingly white, long and straight. Her perfect leg shape, combined with her relatively tall height for a Southern girl, made it hard not to attract attention in this hormone-filled stadium.

What was even more infuriating was that she was also very beautiful!

So, as she warmed up, the men and women running on the track were all looking at her. When the tall and handsome Cheng Yun stood beside her, the number of boys looking at her decreased by more than half. Conversely, the number of girls looking at her increased!

Cheng Yan ran twenty laps in one go, a total of eight kilometers, in less than fifty minutes. This was already a very fast pace for a girl.

It was the same during her run. In the entire stadium, there were no more than five girls who could match her speed. Regardless of whether the other girls were running one kilometer or two, she could easily overtake them at a steady pace. Even most of the boys couldn't keep up with her, and she passed them one after another. This undoubtedly made her, who was already eye-catching, even more of a focal point.

But when she stopped and placed her legs on the climbing frame to stretch, her gaze was helplessly fixed on a running figure in the stadium.

That figure was also very conspicuous in her eyes.

He was still running.

Cheng Yan felt truly helpless.

Leg length was a very important factor in long-distance running. Even though she had a pair of long legs, her height was only 1.7 meters, so she couldn't compare her leg length to Cheng Yun's 1.8 meters. Although she had overtaken many boys taller than her while running, Cheng Yun was running too fast.

At first, she had seriously warned Cheng Yun not to run too fast and to maintain a steady pace, explaining that running too fast could easily lead to exhaustion, muscle strain, or low blood sugar later on. But then she realized... this was his steady pace.

He had lapped her countless times. She was lapped by him about once every two laps she ran, yet he was still running.

The sky had darkened. After an unknown amount of time, a huge light on one side of the stadium suddenly turned on, casting shadows across the field. Cheng Yun was still running.

He had already run more than thirty laps consecutively without slowing down. Not only was Cheng Yan paying attention to him, but many other men and women who were also running started to focus on him, wondering if they were running on the same track.

Damn it... Cheng Yun was also tired!

The vest's markings could prevent damage to his muscles and bones, but they couldn't replace the body's system for recharging his muscles. He was running a bit too fast. With his current physical fitness, it was very strenuous to continuously supply so much energy to his leg muscles. But he couldn't help it. Heroine Yin was sitting on the grass of the football field, gesturing for him to keep running, and even told him to speed up!

After finishing her stretches, Cheng Yan did some bodyweight leg exercises, performed several pull-ups that many boys couldn't even do a few of, and even did more than a dozen dips, primarily for chest muscles, under the gaze of a crowd admiring a goddess...

At this point, Cheng Yun finally finished running.

He did a couple of simple stretches, without excessive muscle relaxation, and then walked over to the parallel bars area.

Cheng Yan glanced at him, her expression a little strange, but she tried her best to remain calm and said with her chin slightly raised, "Going back?"

"If you want to go back, you can go first," Cheng Yun said. "I'm going to play a bit longer."

"No need, I'm fine too. I'll stay here with you." Cheng Yan wanted to see just how much of a monster he was. It wasn't possible that after not exercising for so long, he could still maintain his peak physical condition from back then, right?

"Alright," Cheng Yun picked up the milk tea he had placed on the grass and tilted his head back, drinking more than half of it.

Soon, Cheng Yan realized her mistake. She shouldn't have come running with Cheng Yun, nor should she have stayed to watch him continue his workout. She herself exercised frequently and was very confident in her physical fitness, so she had been looking at Cheng Yun as a weakling recently. But this wrong decision today not only shattered her confidence but also made it impossible for her to ever call Cheng Yun a weakling again.

She lost, she lost big!